Garden Design Ideas To Compliment Your Outdoor Kitchen Remodel

If you love to entertain at home, an outdoor kitchen remodel is an excellent option for creating a space for cooking, mixing drinks, and relaxing on the patio or deck. A new outdoor kitchen design also adds instant elegance and style to your property, but the way you plan your garden and greenery around the space is also essential! Check out these design ideas to compliment your outdoor kitchen renovation plans.

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Create a Wall

Adding a bit of separation between your new outdoor kitchen renovation and your close neighbors allows for added privacy and relaxation. Garden walls also help to insulate a space from noisy neighbors, roadways, nearby schools, and all other such distractions!

A garden wall might start with a trellis or wires connected to support poles. You might then plant grapevines, ivy, morning glories, or another thick, climbing plant. Learn more about these types of plants on our specialty planting page. Those leaves block the view and help keep sound waves out of your kitchen space while flowering vines also add pops of color and lots of visual interest.

Plant Shrubs and Bushes

Apart from a garden wall, you might consider planting thick shrubs and bushes for added privacy next to your new outdoor kitchen renovation. Lilac bushes are an especially lovely choice, or you might choose box hedges if you prefer something trimmed and manicured.

If your property has a chain link fence around it, you can combine a garden wall and a set of shrubs by planting thick vines at the base of the fence and letting those vines grow through the links. Once they fill out, you’ll have lots of privacy between your new outdoor kitchen remodel and your neighbors.

Herbs

What outdoor kitchen design is complete with fresh herbs you might use for cooking? You can add some greens and wonderful aromas to your outdoor kitchen renovation by planting herbs along the edges of your patio or deck, or planting those herbs in small pots and placing them throughout your outdoor kitchen. You’ll then have some great greens to soften the space and all the fresh herbs you need for when it’s time to cook in your new outdoor kitchen!

Use Oversized Pots to Hide Outlets

Your outdoor kitchen design will typically include lots of outlets attached to the home’s exterior walls or along a bar area in the kitchen space itself. You can hide these unsightly outlets with oversized potted plants. Choose a color and design that coordinates with your kitchen space and ensure the flowers or plants are easy to maintain and won’t wilt under the added heat of your new outdoor kitchen renovation.

Add Color to Break Up a Panel Fence

If your new outdoor kitchen renovation is surrounded by a wood or vinyl panel fence, you might break up the look of those stark panels with colorful flowers and bushes. Avoid plain green shrubbery unless you add smaller flowers with pops of color in front of them, to keep the fence and your vegetation from seeming dull and bland next to your new outdoor kitchen design. You might also add hooks for hanging baskets of colorful blooms for even more color.

Don’t Forget Lighting!

When choosing landscaping that will complement your new outdoor kitchen renovation and design, don’t forget lighting! After all, you’ll probably want to sit and enjoy your outdoor space long after twilight. Added lighting creates a welcoming glow in your outdoor kitchen while also highlighting your flowers and greenery.

Consider solar-powered spike lanterns you can place up and down walkways and in front of those colorful bushes by your fence. Add some string lights to your green wall and a spotlight in front of oversized planters. All those landscape lights will create a beautiful glow and ensure your plants and shrubs don’t disappear once the sun sets!

Are New Soft Wash Power Washing Chemicals Safe For Your Garden?

Soft wash power washing is an excellent choice for all your residential pressure washing needs. Soft wash cleaning uses specialty surfactants that dissolve thick, caked-on dirt, mud, and grime from exterior walls, gutters, roofs, and other surfaces. A low-pressure washing rinses away that residue without etching, scratching, or otherwise damaging brick, siding, concrete, and other materials.

While soft wash power washing is safe for hard surfaces on your property, it’s worth noting if this process is also safe for gardens, flowerbeds, and other landscaping features. After all, what good is it to have clean surfaces outside your home if your beautiful flowers and landscaping trees then wilt and wither after exposure to those chemicals?

About Soft Wash Power Washing Surfactants

Soft wash power wash surfactants are tough on dirt and grime, but these detergents are not simply sprayed all over your property haphazardly. For surfactants to dissolve thick dirt and grime, they need careful application along a property’s outside surfaces.

The detergents used for a soft wash system also dissolve dirt, mud, caked-on sand, and other residues and debris, but are typically soft on living plants and vegetation. These detergents are not likely to harm the roots, stems, flowers, and other parts of your beautiful landscaping features or cause them to wither and wilt.

Low-Pressure Washing Systems

The detergents used for a soft wash pressure washing services dissolve thick dirt and grime so that a low-pressure rinse is all that’s needed to wash away all residues, as said. This also makes soft wash systems safe for your beautiful landscaping! High-pressure rinses might tear right through your landscaping features, flowers, shrubbery, and miniature trees, but low-pressure rinsing is gentle on all the vegetation and shrubbery around your property.

Low-pressure washing also means far less water used for exterior cleaning! In turn, you’re less likely to wind up with bothersome puddles of harmful detergents and other materials around your home’s landscaping features and flowerbeds.

Choosing a Professional Power Washing Contractor Near You

To ensure your flowers and landscaping features are safe during a soft wash pressure cleaning, choose a reputable and reliable power washing contractor near you. He or she should set protective tarps over your property’s vegetation and especially delicate flowerbeds and nearby vegetable gardens. They should also evaluate your property to note the best pressure washing method for ensuring as much water as possible rinses off your property and into the street or a receptacle they provide.

There is also nothing wrong with asking a residential power washing contractor how they plan to protect your lawn and landscaping features! A reputable and reliable company will have a system in place for ensuring residential gardens, shrubbery, and other greens are safe from damage due to the power washing systems, including soft wash pressure washing.

If you take your time to find a reputable and reliable pressure washing company near you, you might find that soft wash systems are safer for your property’s greenery than any other power washing option! Soft wash cleaning involves a precise application of detergents and surfactants and requires far less water than high-pressure washing; when applied by an experienced professional, soft wash cleaning is probably the safest option for your home’s beautiful lawn and landscaping!

Garden Design Ideas for the West Coast

West coast living offers many unique advantages for residents of coastal states, including warm weather that contributes to healthy, lush, green gardens! If you’re looking to add some new flowers and greenery to your west coast property but are a bit stuck for design ideas, check out some simple garden design tips and suggestions anyone can follow for a beautiful lawn and landscaping features.

Go Minimal

Many west coast homes are very modern, with clean, square lines and lots of metal and glass features. If you have a minimalist or modern home, you might also opt for some greens to soften the space but without becoming overwhelming. Choose small green shrubs to plant along the front walkway and edge of the driveway, to hide those lines and add some texture without adding too much vegetation.

Square box hedges are also an excellent choice for minimalist designs. Manicured shrubs add some green while also coordinating with the square lines of your house. You might also plant just one or two landscaping trees by the front of the home, to tone down those square lines while still keeping greenery a bit sparse.

Try Wildflowers

landscape design and plantings

If you want to try something the opposite of minimal, consider layers of colorful wildflowers outside your west coast home! Add retaining walls or box planters along your yard to create a staggered look and mix up the wildflowers you plant. The more variety you add to your mixture, the more color and texture in your flowers!

You might also add a long row of tall sunflowers along your house or the fence, to provide a natural backdrop for those flowers. Sunflowers provide a rustic look along with lots of color and texture, creating even more visual interest for your new wildflowers.

Go for a Beach Theme

If you live on the west coast, why not try a beach theme for your house and your garden? Choose reeds and other plants that grow in marshy areas for your outdoor space. You might also plant these in pots and planters painted soft blue, green, yellow, and tan, all the colors of the beach!

Decorate Your Home’s Walkways

Many west coast homes have beautiful backyards and side yards, perfect for entertaining. An excellent way to break up the look of large plots of grass and ensure guests can easily make their way to nearby benches and seating areas is to use oversized patio pavers and stones. Pavers and stones add some texture and hardness to soft grass while also creating a natural walkway.

You might also add even more pops of color and texture by planting baby’s breath or another delicate green around the edges of those stones. Let the greenery fill in and get full so that it tones down the stones and creates some separation between the pavers and the grass, for maximum visual appeal and style.

Go For a Soft Cottage Look

The warm weather of the west coast is an excellent atmosphere for rosebushes to thrive, so consider a cottage look outside your house. Plant tea roses where you need low shrubbery and long-stemmed rosebushes along a tall fence, for something proportionate to its height.

Consider mixing and matching the color of your rosebushes for maximum visual impact. You also want to choose roses that complement but stand out from colors around them. For example, don’t plant white roses next to your white house as those flowers will then simply blend in! Choose white roses against a red brick house and red and yellow roses against a white house. Choosing opposing colors ensures maximum impact and an amazing style in your cottage themed west coast garden.

Coastal Garden Design Ideas

The coast has many unique, historic homes and commercial structures that offer lots of charm and personality. Adding to their overall appeal are their gardens and landscaping features, often full of colorful flowers and blooming shrubs with pops of color and lovely aromas. If you’re looking to add a garden or new landscape design to your Sarasota or coastal home, you might note some vital tips for ensuring it’s always healthy and thriving.

Plant Tall Flowering Shrubs in Back

Create a nice backdrop for your coastal garden with taller, flowering shrubs you plant next to your fence or house. These will help break up the look of the home or a plain panel fence, and can also hide an unsightly chain-link fence as well!

sarasota landscape design

Consider summersweet, which grows about five feet tall and very wide, or blue wild indigo, which grows about four feet tall. Swamp milkweed grows some three to four feet in height and orange coneflower grows about three feet tall, making them a perfect landscaping backdrop for smaller flowers in front or to provide separation between your lawn and house.

Note the Colors of Flowers

When planning your landscaping design in Sarasota or surrounding areas, note the color of flowers you can expect and ensure you mix these up accordingly. For example, you don’t want orange coneflower next to yarrow flowers as this might be too much yellow and orange together, and the flowers might simply blend in and disappear.

Instead, try yellow flowers with red or blue, or red and white varieties. You might have winterberry, with their strong red color, next to white foxglove in your landscape design. Light purple catmint also works well with the strong color of coneflower or the yellow of yarrow.

Add Hardscaping

Hardscaping refers to items in your landscape design that are not growing; for example, patio pavers, trellises, and decorative items like barrels and buckets are all hardscaping. Hardscaping breaks up the look of greens and flowers of your landscaping in Sarasota, FL and provides added texture.

To add hardscape features to your landscape design, work in terms of thirds; two thirds of your landscaping might be flowers and greens, and then another third compromised of patio pavers, brick edging, and decorative features. Hardscape features also work well in far corners or overly large areas of your property that get overwhelmed by greenery; an arch in a corner of your lot or decorative bucket on one side of your garden keeps all those greens and flowers from blending in with each and looking dull and drab.

Don’t Forget the Grass

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Your landscaping is also offset by a healthy, lush lawn. If you struggle to grow grass on your property or there are lots of patchy brown spots, it’s probably time for sod installation. Fresh sod gives you a hearty green lawn in an instant, without waiting for seed to sprout.

Fresh sod installation also replaces grass that doesn’t thrive on the coast. Some grass species work well in warmer climates or when exposed to lots of sun, and these might not grow easily in Sarasota area neighborhoods! Consider sod installation along with your new landscape design so your entire property is beautiful and healthy.